


a waste of a perfectly good explanation

by couldaughter



Series: author's choice [9]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Stargate Atlantis Fusion, Background Relationships, Getting Together, M/M, Minor peril, Space Bears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 11:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10358979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: Nick turned his head to make sure Sergei saw him roll his eyes. “You think you’re so funny.”Deliberately, Sergei widened his eyes. “Who,me?”“I miss when you didn’t speak English,” said Nick, who was really bad at lying. The crinkle around his eyes gave him away; the twitch at one side of his mouth.





	

“Do you ever wonder why we’re here?” Nick asked, looking up through the canopy of orange-and-purple leaves above them, one hand on his gun and the other on his hip. He always got philosophical when it was just him and Sergei, for some reason.

Sergei gave Nick an incredulous look. “We signed up for super secret space mission,” he said, deliberately monotonous. “We went to space where we landed on another planet. Now we are exploring the planet.”

“Oh no, I get _that_ ,” said Nick, as if Sergei was the ridiculous one. “I just mean, y’know, philosophically.”

“I think _you_ are here because God wished to test me,” said Sergei, jabbing him lightly with his elbow. “And I think I am failing his test.”

Nick huffed. “You’ve never failed a test in your life, _Dr_ Bobrovsky.”

“Not true. Once in primary I failed a spelling test. I carry that burden with me even now.”

“How traumatic,” said Nick with a grin. “I can’t imagine how you’ve coped.”

They stood in comfortable silence for a while, Sergei not bothering to respond. They’d got pretty good at comfortable silences in the few months they’d been in the Pegasus galaxy - it was one of the things Sergei appreciated about their friendship, the way they both knew when to speak and when to shut up.

Sergei took the opportunity to harvest some leaves. The Swedes had raked him over the coals for forgetting to collect botanic samples on their last mission, although in fairness he’d spent a great deal of that mission unconscious in a cell. Pretty much par for the course in the Pegasus galaxy, but definitely not a great opportunity for gathering foliage into correctly labelled bags and vials.

“Hey, Nick,” he called, abandoning formality as they’d grown used to doing. “Could you get some of those wildflowers? Wear gloves this time, Murray will kill you if you come with another alien rash.”

Before Nick could reply, he was interrupted by the sound of a twig snapping nearby. And then a few more, even closer. Sergei held up a hand, turning towards the source of the noise. “I hear something.”

“Yeah,” said Nick, his voice low. It was what Sergei had come to refer to as his ‘captain voice’, although Nick was already a lieutenant colonel by then. “I hear it too.”

Moments later, a bear burst through the undergrowth.

“Oh,” said Sergei, taking just one moment to react and then throwing all his higher brain functions into running away from the space bear. Crashing through foliage he had, moments before, been delicately wrestling into evidence bags was a somewhat surreal experience, but not one he had much opportunity to dwell on.

Five frantic minutes later, out of breath and sweating heavily, he turned to discover Nick was not, in fact, right behind him. He froze.

“Nick?”

It was a good thing he was already out of breath, or Sergei might’ve been embarrassed by the way his voice caught. He started running back the way he’d came, batting crimson red foliage away from his face and keeping an eye on the edges of the path.

About half a mile down the path, the brush to one side of the path was crushed, as if someone (or something) had rolled through it. “ _Nick_?” He held his breath, hopeful but apprehensive. It was unlikely there was only one space bear on the planet.

He heard an answering groan, a little ways behind him. He nearly slipped over as he span round, heels digging into the ground. “Where are you?”

“Down here,” said Nick, who was sprawled out halfway under a bush behind a tree. “Who woulda thought getting sideswiped by a bear would hurt worse than a hipcheck.”

Sergei rolled his eyes, heart hammering. “Honestly, I cannot take my eyes off you for one second.”

Nick pushed himself up into a sitting position. “I’ll buy you a baby harness for me next time we get leave,” he said, wincing theatrically. “Could you check my leg? I think it hit a tree or something when I went flying.”

Kneeling down in mud was pretty low on Sergei’s list of preferred activities, but he kept his complaints to himself. Nick’s leg was definitely broken, bent at an angle that would have a younger Sergei reaching for a protractor. He winced, hand hovering over the break as if he could fix it with a touch.

Nick touched his shoulder, then tilted Sergei’s chin up, meeting his eyes. “Hey, breathe. I’ve had worse.” He paused, then shook his head. “Actually, no, I totally haven’t. But we’re pretty close to the ’jumper either way. Help me up?”

Sergei swallowed, tasting bile at the back of his throat. “Your leg is, ah, very broken.”

“ _Very_ broken, huh?” Nick said, smiling weakly. His commanding officer’s ability to crack wise in literally any situation was infuriating. Sergei wished he could muster an annoyed reaction, like he usually would, but all he could summon up was relief. He glanced down at his leg; turning an unpleasant shade of green, he looked back up at Sergei. “Okay, I see what you mean.”

Sergei settled back on his heels and pulled one of Nick’s arms over his shoulder, taking some of his weight. “Come on,” he said, settling his hand on Nick’s waist. “Time to practice for the three-legged race.”

Nick turned his head to make sure Sergei saw him roll his eyes. “You think you’re so funny.”

Deliberately, Sergei widened his eyes. “Who, _me_?”

“I miss when you didn’t speak English,” said Nick, who was really bad at lying. The crinkle around his eyes gave him away; the twitch at one side of his mouth.

They limped on for about a hundred yards, until the puddlejumper just came into view at the edge of the forest. Sergei’s arm was beginning to ache from holding Nick up, his back starting to twinge. Nick’s head had tilted a little to the side, dangerously close to resting on Sergei’s shoulder.

“Good thing you’re shorter than me, huh?” He smiled.

Nick rolled his eyes. “I’m not even gonna touch that.”

Putting any pressure on his leg made Nick go white as a sheet, hissing through his teeth, so Sergei was practically carrying him by the time they reached the puddlejumper, his free arm supporting Nick’s stomach. His gun was still slung across his back, along with the satchel of botany samples.

At least there was one good thing coming off this planet.

The bay door opened without a hitch, the dimly lit interior a welcome sight. “I will get a medkit,” said Sergei, gently helping Nick down into the co-pilot’s chair.

The medkit yielded some heavy duty painkillers, bandages and a _lot_ of antiseptic. Thankfully, Atlantis was a little ahead of the game on medicine, so Sergei mostly focused on making sure Nick stopped bleeding. Setting the splint was the hardest part; reluctant to cause Nick even more pain, Sergei took a little longer than necessary setting the bone.

He rested a hand on Nick’s forehead. Warm, but not overly so. “Murrs will have to check, but I am pretty sure I save the leg.”

Nick smiled weakly. “Would you still love me without it?”

“I would still love you even if you were a head in a jar, like bad sci-fi cartoon,” said Sergei, smiling back. His traitorous heart skipped a beat. “I hope we do not find that tech out here, though. Freaky.”

“Pretty freaky, yeah,” agreed Nick, leaning back in his chair. His speech was a little slurred, the painkillers sending him drifting. “Can you fly back solo? I’m kinda tired.”

“I think I can manage,” said Sergei, gently patting Nick’s hand. “You sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Means a lot,” said Nick, yawning. “See you in the morning, dear.”

“See you then,” said Sergei. His voice, quiet as it was, echoed.

 

* * *

 

As Nick had begun to figure out mere minutes after first stepping through the Gate onto the cathedral-like concourse, life in a floating labyrinth of a city was really not that similar to a life of semi-retirement in suburban Ohio.

For one thing, he hadn’t needed gene therapy to use the coffee machine back on Earth.

Of course, people were people everywhere, and the main reminder of home for him was keeping an ear out for the grind of the gossip mill as it filtered through Atlantis.

There was an ongoing pool on how long it’d take Dubinsky in Engineering to finally quit playing hard to get with Anisimov, for example, although Nick was privately pretty sure they’d been sleeping together for a good six months before the scuttlebutt even caught up that Dubinsky was interested.

Then, of course, there were the missions - which weren’t like the ones he’d lead on Earth in pretty much any way, besides the obvious concern of keeping his team alive and mostly in one piece. Until getting his leg snapped by a space bear (the biologists were still brainstorming a better name, but Nick liked the simplicity of space bear too much to give it up), the worst injury he’d had on the job in Atlantis was a concussion and a bad slice on the arm. The worst he’d had to deal with for a team member was the time McElhinney rolled his ankle jogging to the gate.

He’d been lucky, really.

He woke up in the medbay, groggy and a little high on morphine, to find Dr Murray checking an IV to his left. That had been a surprise, since the last thing he remembered clearly was almost going face first into a pile of dead leaves 50 feet from the ’jumper. He knew Sergei’d patched him up after that, had a vague memory of him making a Futurama reference that Nick wanted to laugh at but couldn’t find the energy for.

Attempting to check on his leg proved more difficult. It was elevated slightly, like Nick remembered seeing on TV the few times he’d caught a medical show, and there was a slim cast around it - slimmer than he would’ve got on Earth, but still bulky enough to make him feel a little trapped.

Murray coughed. “Good to see you awake,” he said, setting down the empty IV bag he’d just replaced. “You’ve been out less than a day, in case you were worried.”

Nick wasn’t - he’d been injured often enough in his career to stop worrying too much about that kind of thing, just how soon he could get away with walking it off.

“You were pretty damn lucky, sir,” said Murray, unconsciously echoing Nick’s internal monologue. “If you’d hit the tree a couple inches further up your leg the break might’ve ruptured your femoral - I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how bad that’d be.” He laughed, nervously. Nick often forgot that Murray was one of the youngest members of the SGC, considering the amount of time he’d spent submerged in one soldier or another’s guts since they’d arrived. The other teams weren’t often as lucky as Nick’s was.

“So, what,” said Nick, shifting slightly on the medbay bed. “I’m confined to bed for a while, make sure it’s healing?”

“Pretty much, sir,” replied Murray, shifting his weight from left to right. “It’s, uh, gonna be a while for a break this bad unless the anthropologists unearth some kinda bone healing ray. I’d let you go with a cast and crutches but, to be honest, sir, I don’t trust you not to do something stupid before it’s had half a chance to set.”

Nick laughed. “Thanks for the honesty, doc.”

Murray nodded, looked down at Nick’s chart, and smiled. “Oh, um, Dr Bobrovsky came in earlier while you were asleep. Said he’d look in on you for me between check-ups, if that’s alright.”

“That’s real nice of him,” said Nick, trying to ignore the flush he felt creeping up his neck. He and Sergei weren’t anything, really, but that didn’t stop him thinking about it from time to time, private and speculative. He knew half the base had their suspicions - Dubinsky had relished informing him about the pool the botany department had running on them - but that was all they had, and Nick wasn’t inclined to risk the good thing he and Sergei had going.

It was definitely real nice of him, though. He’d have to see what he could scrounge on the base black market for him; he knew Sergei had lost a few home comforts in the last poker tournament he absolutely had no knowledge of, as far as the base commander knew.

“I’m keeping you in overnight to make sure the blood thinners do their job,” said Murray, still reading through the chart. “In the morning we can probably move you back to quarters. I’d keep you in longer but frankly, sir-”

“I’d go stir goddamn crazy in here?” Nick supplied, with a grin. “Again, the honesty is appreciated. I’ve got a whole buncha trashy novels to catch up on, don’t worry. I’ll be good as gold.” He yawned, suddenly tired. He glanced up at the IV bag with accusatory eyes.

With a sigh, Murray set down the chart. “It’s near on lights out, Colonel, so I’ll let you get some more shut-eye. Try not to move about too much.”

Nick patted his cast, gently. “Yeah, I don’t think that’ll present too much of a problem. Night, doc.”

He closed his eyes. Sleep came quickly; he dreamt strange, formless dreams and slept well past reveille.

Painkillers always did a number on his sleep schedule.

 

* * *

 

Sergei took a moment to collect himself.

The door of Nick’s quarters loomed large before him, and while he’d visited them plenty of times before, those were usually quick visits, sandwiches between trips to the mess, or through the gate. Nick was always leaving something vital under his bed, or inside his dresser, and the regular trips back and forth were becoming part of the regular mission routine.

Either way, that was significantly less intimidating than what Sergei was about to do - hang out with him, in his room. Possibly while sitting on Nick’s bed, pretending he felt only platonic things about his technically superior officer. It was all very worrisome.

He knocked. Almost immediately, the door slid open. Sergei smiled up at the vaulted ceiling above him - sometimes Atlantis liked to lend her residents a hand, and it paid to be grateful.

“Morning,” he said, stepping into the room like he hadn’t spent five minutes outside worrying whether Nick would be happy to see him, stuck in bed and medicated as he was. Sergei’s previous experience with an injured Nick hadn’t boded well, although back then they’d barely known each other.

As it was, Nick smiled at him from the bed and patted the free square inch of blanket beside him. “Hey, come on in. Make yourself at home.”

Sergei perched on the free blanket, primly. He folded his hands on one knee, leaning back against the headboard besides Nick. “I always do.”

Nick grinned. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. How’s my team?”

“They are good,” said Sergei, looking down at his hands. They were more or less the opposite of good, without Nick to keep them in line, but he wasn’t inclined towards honesty on this particular occasion. It’d probably do more harm than good, Nick walking on a broken leg to the mess to break up one of the six fights Dubinsky’d started in the past day.

He didn’t take insults well, particularly ones directed towards a certain commanding officer. Sergei could relate.

“I’m sure they are,” said Nick, not convinced. He was fairly accomplished at seeing through all his crew members’ bullshit.

Sergei smiled, and shrugged. “As good as we can get without you there, I think. We all miss your big nose and bigger-”

“I think I’m alright with that sentence as-is, Bobs,” Nick said hastily.

“I was quoting,” Sergei replied, innocently. “Dubinsky was very specific.”

“Of _course_ it was Dubinsky,” said Nick. He pushed himself up on his elbows, just so he could rest his elbows on his knees and, thus, his head in his hands. “Can’t he leave me to suffer alone on my sickbed?”

“Sadly, no,” said Sergei, patting Nick consolingly on the shoulder. “And I think it is difficult to be alone with your favourite botanist visiting every day, no?”

Nick turned his head and smiled, warmly. “Oh, for sure. I reckon at this point ‘present company excluded’ can be assumed for pretty much everything I say.”

Sergei ducked his head, abashed. “Right back at you, Nick,” he said, a little too seriously. He hoped Nick wouldn’t pick up on the blood that had rushed to his cheeks.

Nick drifted off soon after that on a bed of painkillers and gentle conversation, and Sergei stayed just long enough to feel creepy watching him sleep. He had a feeling Atkinson would make a Twilight reference, because that was an Atkinson kind of thing to do, but it was mostly nice to see Nick’s face not creased with pain, annoyance, or the general atmospheric stress that came with living on a floating city at the other end of the universe from your place of birth.

The next day, Sergei went on what was supposed to be a simple survey mission. Three crew, no problems.

There were significantly more than zero problems, as it turned out.

Around halfway through disembarking from the puddlejumper, Sergei felt a sharp crack to the back of his head and was welcomed, softly, into the arms of unconsciousness.

When he woke up, sometime later, he was tied back to back with Anisimov, who was whispering frantically at Dubinsky - also unconscious, somewhat more roughed up - and Sergei had to make a mental note of yet another Genii planet to avoid in future.

It was a mystery to all of the Atlantis team how the space Amish kept getting the jump on them, but that was an issue for another time.

“Artem,” said Sergei, under his breath. “Calm down.” He and Artem usually spoke English to one another - practice was always more important than ease - but in this case he thought Russian was probably the best option.

“Brandon won’t wake up,” Anisimov replied, voice high and shaky. “He was joking around right before we got captured.”

“He’ll be fine,” said Sergei, hoping he sounded a lot more confident than he felt. “First, we have to get out of these ropes.”

Thankfully, after the third kidnapping in two months, a concealed box cutter had become standard issue in the Pegasus Galaxy. It took a good few minutes for Sergei to wiggle his out of his boot and a few more to saw through Artem’s bonds, but eventually they fell free.

Artem twisted, shaking his wrists out before pulling Dubinsky into his lap. Sergei swallowed, a lump forming in his throat.

“We have to get out of here,” said Artem, one hand carding gently through Dubinsky’s hair. “If we stay here much longer I’ll get embarrassing; Brandon will never let me forget it.”

“It’s probably a concussion,” said Sergei, with all the confidence of a botanist with a first level first aid course’s worth of medical training. He stood up, his knees almost buckling. His vision swam slightly. “Okay, _I_ definitely have a concussion.”

He helped Artem up, and they both dragged Dubinsky to rest between them, one arm over each man’s shoulders.

“Always carrying you around, huh?” Artem said, quietly. Sergei kept his eyes forward, focused on the lock to the cell. Luckily, this faction of the Genii hadn’t been very diligent with their cell door upkeep, and the bottom hinge gave way with a good kick.

The ensuing fight with the few Genii manning the station wasn’t the most intensive fight Sergei had taken part in as part of the SGC.

“Stand down!” A single guard stood in front of the door Sergei assumed led to the surface.

“Uh,” said Dubinsky, who was starting to come round, slowly. “No?”

The guard looked stumped. “Well,” she said, slowly. “I guess I’ll have to… take you out?”

It sounded to Sergei as if she was a server on her first day of work at a restaurant.

“No, thanks,” said Artem. “We have to get my friend here back to base, and the only weapon we have is a one inch box cutter.”

“You’re _fucked_ ,” slurred Dubinsky.

While the guard wavered between laughing at them or attacking, the three of them loped forwards and Dubinsky, sensing an opening, kicked her very hard in the left kneecap.

She crumpled.

“Sorry!” Sergei called, opening the door. It was dark out, by then. “We are in a hurry, otherwise we would definitely have started a real fight.”

“No you would not,” said Artem, rolling his eyes. “You are more pacifist than Leo Tolstoy.”

“I punched Nash once,” Sergei pointed out, slightly affronted.

Artem laughed. “That’s like saying ‘I breathed oxygen once’.”

Sergei huffed, and stayed quiet the rest of the way back to the puddlejumper. He only spoke when the comm pinged to request the passcodes for opening the gate.

“Dubinsky needs a stretcher,” he said, glancing back to where Artem had laid Dubi out on the floor, his jacket folded up as a pillow. “And we all need concussion protocol, I think.”

“Will do,” came Calvert’s crackling voice over the radio. “I’ll let Atkinson know to step it up on the comedy front; I hear laughter is the best medicine.”

Sergei rolled his eyes. “See you in a moment, Calvert.”

“Yes, sir.”

The gate flared blue, and in exactly one moment they were back in the gateroom, the rear door opening onto the concourse.

Sergei stumbled out into the waiting arms of the med team, and allowed himself to be whisked away to a dark, quiet room for concussion testing.

Unsurprisingly, the result was a resounding ‘yes, you have a goddamn concussion’. He’d expected it, considering his vision still being blurry.

“Just give me the information sheet,” he sighed, rubbing his eyes. “I’ll follow it, I’m a botanist not a hockey player.”

Nick laughed.

Sergei looked up. He hadn’t heard Nick come in, or seen him in the low light of the room, but he could definitely recognise his laugh.

“Glad I can amuse you in my time of suffering,” he said, smiling up at Nick’s looming figure. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

Nick put a hand on Sergei’s face. It was at this point that Sergei decided he was having a very strange dream.

A nice dream, but a strange one.

“We didn’t know where you were,” said Nick, quietly. He was smiling, but not in a way that Sergei recognised from his extensive internal encyclopedia of Nick’s expressions. The worry lines around his eyes seemed deeper, his dark circles darker. “I had to check you were okay.”

Sergei tore his eyes away to look down at Nick’s foot, which was encased in the largest moon boot he’d ever seen.

He looked back up. It had paid off, in the past, being able to read Nick at a glance. There’d been one or two very close calls that would’ve been closer if they’d needed to have a conversation about what to do next.

Since he was dreaming, Sergei didn’t see any problem with batting his eyelashes, just a little. He was feeling silly, giddy from the concussion and lightheaded from the lack of food and natural sleep. “I wasn’t so sure either,” he said, seriously.

Nick leaned in. At some point Sergei had stood up to face him, although he wasn’t 100% sure when. He’d been pretty focused on staring at Nick’s face, trying to file away all the new expressions.

The point Sergei realised he wasn’t dreaming came more or less simultaneously with the point Nick kissed him. What tipped him off, first and foremost, was that all his other dreams that involved kissing Nick always cut off just as they got to the good part.

He rather liked being awake for this one. He sighed, opening his mouth slightly and pressing into Nick’s chest.

Nick, as it turned out, was a biting kind of kisser, which Sergei appreciated a lot. They stood for a few more minutes, trading kisses, before Sergei remembered his head injury - a wave of unpleasant, unromantic dizziness swept over him and he sat heavily back onto the cot.

“Well,” he said, starting to smile. “I hope we can do that again.”

Nick, his smile a mirror of Sergei’s, nodded. “Oh,” he said, taking a seat beside him. “I think we can figure something out.”

**Author's Note:**

> this really was not the fic i thought i would be posting next, but here we are. enjoy this OVER 4000 word jaunt directly into my id!
> 
> title from the first episode, because it also outlines my response to anyone asking why i wrote this. :D
> 
> hmu on tumblr @sedsycat, or twitter @zorelkaras if you want more hockey, mcelroys, and call the midwife. i'm an eclectic personality


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